Apple CarPlay Announced – It’s An Infotainment System For Your Car

Apple has announced CarPlay, an infotainment system for your car & is about to be unveiled during the Geneva Motor Show taking place between March 6 and March 16, 2014.

CarPlay – is actually ‘iOS in the car’ feature which was announced as a part of the new iOS 7 last year. It was delayed unexpectedly longer due to some of the crucial bugs in the system. It was under active development during the latest iOS 7 Beta versions.

We reported earlier on our iOS 7 features & changelog article about the said reason & it was the prime reason for the delayed iOS 7.1 public release. Now, with this official announcement of the CarPlay, looks like iOS 7.1 will be released for public with the official launch, which is March 14, 2014.

CarPlay feature is supported on device enabled for lightning-cable such as iPhone 5, iPhone 5S, 5C and above. However, the exact date for the car through the partner companies is now yet known & expected sometime in 2014.

Mercedes, Volvo, Jaguar, Honda, Ferrari, Hyundai & Honda are the primary partners for launching their cars this year with the CarPlay system.

CarPlay features include functions such as:

Making phone calls

Send & receive text messages by listening & dictating them.

Directions

Music control

CarPlay system can be used with a touch, with voice activation command or using the knobs & controls on the system itself.

CarPlay also supports communication to the system through the apps on your iPhone & current list f supported apps include Podcasts, Beats Radio, iHeartRadio, Spotify & Stitcher. Unfortunately, as typical Apple we know, not all the features are available in all countries & will not be available in India (not at least for now)

CarPlay is coming soon to the following Countries

Australia

Canada

France

Germany

Hong Kong

Italy

Japan

Mexico

Republic of Korea

Spain

Switzerland

UK

USA

What do you think of this new CarPlay from Apple? Do share your thoughts.